


Rules of the Forest

by fadeverb



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Magical Realism, Multi, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-14 00:30:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5722813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a wolf in the parlor, and he's so damn polite. Smiling with all those enormous teeth, standing up so straight, tail curled politely down at his back. He's wearing his Sunday best, and while she's never seen a wolf in a suit before, she has to admit, this one's pulling it off. Starched and pressed, with a flower tucked behind one big furry ear.</p>
<p>"You're a long way from home," she says, conscious of being shabby beside him. Her red raincoat is still leaving puddles on the floor of the mud room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rules of the Forest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lostinthefire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostinthefire/gifts).



There's a wolf in the parlor, and he's so damn polite. Smiling with all those enormous teeth, standing up so straight, tail curled politely down at his back. He's wearing his Sunday best, and while she's never seen a wolf in a suit before, she has to admit, this one's pulling it off. Starched and pressed, with a flower tucked behind one big furry ear.

"You're a long way from home," she says, conscious of being shabby beside him. Her red raincoat is still leaving puddles on the floor of the mud room, her hair's a mess from the hood, and she wore clothes today for fixing that leak under the sink that Granny's been complaining of, not for meeting--suitors? That's too old-fashioned a word, these days. For meeting wolves who smile at her like that, whatever they might want.

"I'm a wanderer," says the wolf, an easy voice and a casual shrug. "Little Red, will you come pick flowers with me?"

"I have work to do," she says.

"Those flowers won't pick themselves." He holds up his phone, battered silver thing that looks to have had its edges chewed on. "Half a mile into the forest, and there's a rare bloom for you to try. I'll show you the way. You'll never find it if you stick to the footpath."

Pretty picture, of a pretty flower, and her chest pangs for a moment with all the what-ifs that she left behind last year. That she thought she left behind. "If it's so rare," she says, "I shouldn't pick it."

The wolf leaves her, as polite as ever. She watches him through the parlor window: opening an umbrella on the porch, and stepping out into the ragged front yard of Granny's house. He vanishes the moment he steps between the trees beyond the yard. Forest creatures do.

She shivers, once. Then goes to see to that sink.

#

The next day, there's a huntsman at the back door. Muddy boots from the second day straight of rain, and god, she could just weep for the endless drizzle of it. But she asks him inside, and sees that he scrapes his boots well on the mat before he steps any further in.

"There's wolves in the forest," he says. He's not much older than her, though much taller. The axe slung at his hip like a movie cowboy's pistol gleams ever time he takes a step. That's the way of tools, sometimes: passed down father to son, mother to daughter, and they pick up something along the way. "Thought I should warn you."

"They're polite enough," she says, though she's only met the one. "And I'll be careful."

"Do," he says. He lifts one hand towards her, and then sets it back to the hilt of his axe, like he just reconsidered. "Stay on the path, in any case. How's your granny?"

"Fine," she lies. "Doing real well these days." Granny is never well, and will never be well, and there is the day in and day out of baking and bedpans and trying to coax the plumbing in a hundred-year-old house to do what it ought. Maybe she'd resent it, if she had anyone else left in the world. But there's no one else, and so it's not worth resenting. It's just--what things are.

The huntsman leaves without going any further than the mudroom. A different kind of polite, than the wolf.

#

The rain stops the next morning, and she hauls open the gardening shed to consider what she can get done in a patch of sunlight. Can't mow in weather this wet, but the hedge needs trimming, and that one gangly bush by the front door has been scraping across the window every night. She picks out shears that don't gleam. Plastic handles, bought them at a Home Depot the last time she got a day for chores. Some lady from church spelled her for an afternoon, and it was nearly a vacation, to be away from the house that long.

She cuts back the bush, unskilled hackwork that'll do well enough. The bush is as tough as some people she can think of, and won't be harmed long by the work. There's a satisfaction in the chop of it. One leafy strand after another falling to the ground.

And beneath the bush, pawprints in the mud.

She crouches down and holds her hand out over one. Claw marks where her fingertips go, the pad of the foot shorter and wider than her palm. Big creature. She can guess which one, right off.

When she cuts down the sides of the hedge, and finds more paw prints there, it's no surprise. So he's been lurking? A wolf can lurk where he likes. Forest creatures, like he said. Granny's house isn't of the forest, exactly, but it sure as hell is in it. Jurisdiction gets blurred in cases like that.

Except for the house itself. Every home is a castle, and as long as her grandmother's alive, the castle walls will hold. Those are the rules. Wolves only stand in the parlor if you invite them in.

#

The next time the wolf shows up, she stands in the doorway. He's come to the front door again, like he's all that, and as tidily dressed as before, though he's swapped to something less old-fashioned. Jeans and a plaid shirt over something he could've bought at the Gap. (She hasn't been to one since she moved in here. Too far of a drive, too much time leaving Granny alone. There's a Wal-Mart nearer, that suffices for everything.) He holds out a flower. The one from the picture. "For you, Red."

"That's not my name," she says, but she doesn't offer him one, either. There are rules. "You should've left the poor thing in the ground."

"There are more." He tucks the flower behind his ear, and takes out his phone to show her. Blurry picture, bad lighting, but there's a spread of a half dozen of those purple and white blooms, dotted between the leaf litter of the deep forest. It's a wonder any bees make it that far. "I brought you proof of concept. Come see the rest with me, and I won't touch a one."

"Is that a threat, wolf?"

"I never make threats," he says. His eyes are enormous and tawny yellow. She thinks of streetlights, and the neon signs over bars she hasn't stepped inside for longer than she wants to think of. "I make offers."

"You're a wanderer," she says. "Lone wolf, no pack, no responsibilities, and you'll wander away from that patch as soon as another bit of color catches your eye."

"Yes." He shows her his teeth, long tongue lolling for a moment between them. "But I'll remember where those flowers were, and wonder what happened, if they're gone the next time I pass by."

#

The huntsman stops by on a foggy day, and for a few steps of his approach he could be anyone in the mist. Wolf or man, friend or stranger. It's the gleam of his axe that gives him away, before she can see his face.

She waits for him on the porch. Her hands are still wet from doing the dishes. Everything dries slowly, in this place.

He's brought two plastic containers, one sausage and one ground meat, from his latest kill. Deer, she assumes, though she doesn't ask. The only explanation he gives is, "I ran out of space in my freezer," and she takes the gift exactly the way she did when the lady from church offered to watch her granny. Take gifts or don't take them, but never pry for reasons. The inside of another person's head is none of your business.

She makes him a cup of coffee, and this time he sits down at the kitchen table with her. Talks about this and that, mostly the weather, and comes around, at last, to asking after her family.

"My parents are gone," she says. "My brother's up in Idaho. He's got a family there, a good job. The kids keep him busy."

"The next time he comes around," says the huntsman, "give me a call." He writes his number out on a piece of paper; it's not like cell phones get any reception out here, and the telephone in the kitchen is a rotary. It still plays a tone at her when she picks it up to dial out. "With enough hands, we could do something about that path. Clear it wide enough to let a car pass this way."

"The kids keep him busy," she says again, and this time the huntsman understands what she means.

She keeps the number anyway, pinned to the board by the phone, with the church bulletin for this month's events and the emergency numbers for the hospital. There's no knowing when an axe might come in handy.

#

There's a day and a day and another day, and she only remembers it's Sunday because a lady from church--a different one, this time--shows up with a casserole, muffins, and some of those comments that stand in the place of asking questions.

"I'm fine," she says. "Granny's doing well. Just been busy with yard work, lately." She sends the woman upstairs, and sets to the kitchen. By the time there's footsteps coming down the stairs again, the dishes are washed, the floor's swept, the teakettle's whistling. The parlor door's closed, so no one can see the dust in there.

No point in vacuuming for so few visitors, anyway. It would only send the electric bill that much higher.

#

She's out of milk, even the powdered kind, so she packs up her canvas bags, one inside another into a bundle, pulls on her raincoat, and steps out into the drizzle of the morning. The fence gate's standing open, which doesn't mean anything. The latch on that rusted shut so hard she had to pry the whole thing off weeks ago to let it open at all, and now any old wind will blow the thing open.

The trees of the forest loom over her once she steps onto the footpath. That's the nature of forests, the looming, or at least the forest here. Maybe over in Idaho her brother takes the kids running through forests with big airy spaces between straight-trunked trees, and they run off the path to poke frogs with sticks. Poor frogs, those ones in Idaho. Here she knows better than to step off the path.

Two minutes into the walk, there's a shadow pacing her on the other side of the trees.

"Don't think I don't see you, wolf," she says, and he steps onto the path beside her. It's wide enough for two to walk side by side, if neither of them's carrying too much or too picky about bumping elbows. So he has as much right to the path as she does.

"If I didn't want to be seen," he says, "why would you see me?"

"Those big yellow eyes," she says, and he blinks at her very slowly, like a cat saying it's fine to move a little closer. She keeps up her pace. There's a clock in the back of her head, counting down how long it's safe and fair to be away from the house, and the clock doesn't slow just because wolves want to come walking with her.

"I know all sorts of things," he tells her, and holds up his phone. "I look them up, and then I go look at them. The second part is better. If you would only come with me to see--"

"I don't have the time," she says, and walks faster.

He paces her all the way to the road, and the space where a neighbor lets her park the car, but he stops there. Standing between the trees, the way she stood in the doorway.

"I'll be about," he says. "If you want to see me."

She climbs into the driver's seat, and flings the bags onto the passenger seat. There's no satisfaction to that, not like clipping a bush. Not enough weight to them. "You'll do as you like," she says, "you do wander," and she slams the door shut.

#

When she gets back an hour later, the trunk full of groceries and the clock in her head telling her just how many trips it'll be to get them all to the house, the huntsman is standing there. Looking at the trees, like he just happens to be in the area, thinking about trees. The way people with axes do.

She ends up slamming the door again, after she gets out of the car.

"People talk," she says. "Don't they?" She says it like a challenge, walking right up to look at him so that he has to look back at her, and not pretend otherwise. "They talk about other people, and then you end up here, like I asked for help. But I didn't ask for any help."

He spreads his hands. Big hands, open and callused, carrying nothing. "There are wolves in the forest," he says. "And this is what I do."

"Hunting."

"Taking down what an axe can take down." He nods towards the trees, thick trunks set in no sort of order but their own. A car would never fit down that footpath without removing more than a dozen of them, and each one older than she is.

"An axe can take down anything," she says. "Houses and trees. Humans and wolves. That's your business, and this is mine."

She hauls the four bags of what has to go in the fridge out of the trunk, and walks the footpath alone. Two bags to a hand. Her shoulders are aching by the time she gets to the house. But that's just the way of things, isn't it?

#

She wakes up in the night from the noise of the storm. Wind's rattling the shutters, and she goes to check on Granny, first. Granny, who has no patience with people who are, as she puts it, "nothing but nerves and what-ifs," and who's fast asleep while the thunder rolls outside.

All the same, she takes a flashlight, and walks through the house to check all the windows and the doors. The house is solid on its foundation, but not always so solid at its points of entry. It'll be a nightmare of glass and calling for handymen if some tree throws a branch through a window.

She's finished all the second floor and all the first, and she's ready to head back upstairs, when the front door thumps like that theoretical branch got to it. No matter that there's no tree close enough to that side of the house for anything to clear the porch and come tumbling in there.

Her parents were all manner of things, but they didn't raise her a fool. She makes sure the door's locked, then turns on the porch light from inside, and pulls back a curtain to see what's hit the front door.

There's the wolf. More wolf than man, tonight, barefoot and ears low, and the clothes he's wearing look to have been dragged through the hedge and back, twice. "Little Red, little Red," he says to the window, voice muffled by the walls and the storm, "let me in."

She opens the door. "Just because I invited you into the parlor once, wolf, doesn't mean it'll happen a second time."

He smiles at her. Big sharp teeth, big yellow eyes, and his big furry ears fold flat against the sides of his head. "If you won't leave the path," he says, "I should come inside. One of us out of place. Isn't that fair?"

"Nothing's fair," she says. Lightning cracks across the sky beyond the porch, and between the trees, steel gleams in response. "Nothing's ever fair, and you've never done one thing for me, wolf, not one thing that I asked for, that I should owe you."

"The forest can't owe you anything," the wolf says. He looks back over his shoulder, and she sees how his tail's twisted down between his legs. "You can't owe anything to it, either. Take down the trees if you like. Who will stop you?"

The gleam's getting nearer, and this time she doesn't need to see the huntsman's face to know who it is. "No one," she says. "No one will stop me. They'll help me, maybe even if I don't ask. Don't they know what I need?"

"I don't know what you need." The wolf reaches inside his shirt, wet and torn thing that it is, and takes out a flower. Half the petals missing, as crumpled as what he's wearing. "Do you want this? I can show you more."

"You could show me more," she says. The huntsman's through the gate. "You could take me off the path to show me where they grow. And then what, wolf? What do you want? Because my granny told me that wolves eat little girls who leave the path, and who'll watch her then?"

"I might," says the wolf. He ducks his head. The huntsman is at the porch steps. "I might, and I might not. You're not so little as all that. Will you let me in?"

The huntsman is at the wolf's back, and the axe shines in his hand. "Close the door," he says. "Please." He can see her hesitate. "You never know what wolves will do."

"No," she says, and takes a step back. "There's no knowing anything about the future. It's too stormy outside for man or beast, tonight. Come inside. Both of you."

They look to each other, man and beast. The wolf's tongue lolls for a moment, and his tail uncurls as he steps across the threshold. "Come along, huntsman," he says. "Don't you want to see what I'll do?"

The huntsman puts a hand to the wolf's shoulder, and follows him in.

For the first time in months, the house feels like it has the right number of people inside. "I'll make tea," she says. "Don't turn on any other lights, my granny's sleeping."

They trail her into the kitchen, the both of them, and if they're eyeing each other warily, what of it? It's her house, not the forest. Her rules. And she'll have them both inside if she wants it, whatever anyone believes she needs.


End file.
